On Sun, 3 Jul 2016 08:16:43 +0000 (UTC), Adrian
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2016 09:07:03 +0100, T i m wrote:

Did he come up with "And the accounts haven't even been audited for
years", too?

No, he didn't as it happens, however he did mention the 'big expensive
buildings that are all over the place' and I suggested they 1) had to
work somewhere, 2) Modern building were often cheaper to run than old
ones, 3) There was probably a god reason that the different roles were
in different buildings (historic or otherwise) and 4) I'm not sure
everyone 'enjoys' traipsing between buildings, no matter what they put
on their expenses? shrug

The Brussels/Strasbourg split is a historical oddity - originally, the
parliament was due to move between all the member countries, and started
with Belgium, the first alphabetically. France was next on the list, back
in those early days of half a dozen countries.

Interesting thanks. ;-)

The French got Strasbourg
written into the paperwork, and refuse to remove that...

Damn awkward Frogs. ;-)


Oh, and the other one was that 'after a few years these MEP's on
£155,000 p.a. they were often millionaires'?

Bad maths apart, sounds like simple jealousy.

Or just a gullibility to accept someone else's 'crusade'. He had
admitted he had read several books and articles on the EU but the
chances are, stuff written by another Euro Skeptic so no surprises it
would reinforce a particular (biased) view?

Oh, and an MEP's salary is €8k/mo before tax, €6250 after. So that's €75k/
yr after tax, £63k. Damn near 16yrs to become a "millionaire", always
assuming you don't actually spend any of your salary...

Quite!

https://fullfact.org/europe/did-audi...ign-eu-budget/

Interesting, thanks. So, I think I conclude from that that like any
organisation (outside 'a few' people) there will be issues, errors,
mistakes and some people 'trying it on'. And as I said elsewhere these
will generally get resolved given time.

Yep. And most of the errors actually come from the member countries
anyway, rather than the EU itself.

Understood.

As an aside (and you seem to have a good handle on all this), I think
I understand because we have reciprocal relationships with the various
EU countries re health cover, if a UK person in say Spain needs
medical help, the cost of that is borne by the UK NHS and in turn, a
Spaniard requiring medical care here is charged back to Spain?

However, I think I heard that our NHS is particularly slow at sending
out the invoices and hence we are 'owed' quite a bit of cash?

Not that it won't get resoled in time (theoretically), just that I
understand we could do with it ourselves? ;-)

Cheers, T i m